June 27, 2008 – The donkeys are curious about Lenore, and can’t quite figure her out. She is simple, she is the Hound of Love.

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 In a way, I love the little dramas that suddenly surface in the life of a farm, in the country: lightning strikes, sick sheep, rooster attacks, blizzards, droughts, lame donkeys, escapes through fences, deer-four wheeler collisions, rabid raccoons and possums, the cycles of pastoral life and sudden death that challenge you, test  your senses, shape your experience.
  Not too long ago, I would have been quite stymied to be in the middle of a rooster brawl in a barn. I’ve been in bedlam for five years now, and it is true that nothing much surprises me anymore, and my confidence in my ability to handle things has soared. So has the particular value system of the farm, and my place in the ethical life of the things that live here.
  In a strange sort of way, the farmer is a kind of monarch, an omnipotent figure. Only the farmer can make decisions about hay and water, fences and barns, shelter and medicine, life and death. He makes decisions all the time, and his is the final word.
  I know how to use a rifle now, and I have had to use it more than once. I do not find many life and death decisions involving animals all that complicated – when a sick sheep is suffering or beyond reasonable reach of medicine, it is put down. When Winston Jr. attacked his father repeatedly, it was not a complex or difficult decision to kill him. The farm is larger than any of its parts, and the good of the farm always takes precedence – from the health of animals to the management of pastures and buildings, to decisions about cost and priority. If you can’t do those things, you can’t be on  a farm, or won’t last long on one. Decisions about the life and death of animals are not abstract ethical political debates, but real world situations that need to be resolved quicky, efficiently,  and economically.
  They might seem difficult or dramatic from a distance, but in truth, they are not. Rose is enormously experienced at dealing with emergencies now (Lenore is not, nor is Izzy) and when there is trouble, the first thing I do is get her, and when I point to any creature – a goose, an aroused rooster, a sheep or donkey – and say, “get it,” I know that animal will be in a corner soon enough. So Rose was able to save Winston’s life, really, when she went after Winston Jr. and backed  him into a corner, until I could get the rifle.
  I know what kind of a bag to put the body in, and where to dump it, far enough away so that the predators it attracts won’t come near the farm. I know where the gun is, and is ready, and I know how to fall off of a
four-wheeler when it flips, and  hit the ground rolling. i know how to move warm, smelly bodies around and get them off the farm.
   People often tell me they are sorry when a sheep dies or I have to kill something, and I appreciate the good words and wishes. But I guess, if I am being honest about it, I am not all that sorry or upset.
  This is the life I choose, and this stuff is all a part of it, and it has, in fact, taught me and tested me and changed me, and I am nothing but grateful for that. Truth is, it has come to seem ordinary to me, the good and the bad. And one has little meaning without the other.
 That, in itself, is amazing.